


The Gift

by Eternaladdict



Category: Glue (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-09
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-24 15:53:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2587217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eternaladdict/pseuds/Eternaladdict
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tina after the fallout.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Gift

It’s bleak the morning of the race, so unlike a year ago. As Tina guides Blackout into the starting blocks she takes care not think about the last time she was here. The noise of the crowd comes in deafening waves and she lets it sweep over her, lets it wash away her doubt. She doesn’t look for familiar faces in the stands, knows already that there’s nobody there.

Horror has a way of taking hold, of seeping into everything that was once benign or mundane and turning it to rot. There is blood on her conscience, bodies in her dreams. There is a boy, bleeding on the floor, alone and out of reach. "Sorry" she wants to say to those lost friends, "sorry none of you are here and I am".

She breathes deeply instead, letting the last of her nerves escape with the breath, making it a promise, a declaration. Blackout appears to sense her resolve. His ears prick forwards as he shifts his weight eagerly from foot to foot. They both wait, restless but composed. If it has taught her anything, the past year has taught her patience.

_For the first three months of his sentence Eli had refused to see her. She had made the trip every fortnight, standing in line for the prison with all the other visitors, only to be turned away when she gave her name. She still doesn’t know what made him change his mind. When she eventually got to sit across from him, after all those months of stubbornly waiting, Tina was struck by how little she knew what to say to him. They were never ones for talking much and there, amongst the handcuffs and the uniforms, they both seemed so out of place, so unlike themselves. He still looked at her the same way. It still left her feeling hot and reckless. She remembers wanting to touch him, wanting to hold him more than she had wanted anything in her life and she remembers the colour of the signs declaring she couldn't._

The noise of the gates opening cuts through everything like a gun shot and Tina, who has always been a fighter, who has never known how to do anything else, hurls herself into battle.

Blackout gets away well. His stride is relaxed and smooth but she can feel the power underneath, the restrained ferocity. Training holds him back, he won’t go without her signal.

_He said almost nothing and the silence spread, swelling, suffocating, until the space between them seemed something terrible and infinite and unbearable.  So Tina started to talk. She told him about James leaving for university and about making up with Ruth. She told him about Rob, how he rarely spoke to her anymore and how he drank more than he should. She told him about Annie and small, stupid little things in her life that she hoped would make him smile. She didn't talk about despair, how to seeped into every aspect of her life until even making toast or washing her hair seemed pointless and too much effort. She didn't tell him about all the nights she couldn't sleep, how the hours stretched out and her misery begun to feel like a living, breathing thing in the bed beside her.  She didn't tell him what it felt like to live without the people that she loved, how it felt like a wound, raw and bleeding and refusing to heal.  She didn't tell him because he already knew.  
_

Tina guides Blackout to the middle of the pack and sits there, keeping his pace steady. The two favourites, one a mid-sized grey and the other, a handsome piebald stallion a few hands taller than Blackout, are both up in front. She keeps him close on their heels, letting them tire and waiting for a gap to open up.  The world is a blur, reduced to streaks of colour and noise and Tina is alone. Just her and Blackout outrunning the world.

_He seemed almost angry to hear that she had stopped riding, as if she had abandoned him rather than Blackout and childish dreams.  He told her to start racing again, dismissed her when she told him she didn't see the point. "Ride" he had said with that same intensity he put into everything "Ride and you’ll find the point"._

A large chestnut pushes heavy against Blackout’s right flank. Tina can feel the muscles of other horse against her leg, the weight trying to trap her to the fence. Her heartbeat is a thunderous rhythm in her ears and it sounds like fury, it sounds like victory. Tina refuses to give. She holds Blackout to the inside line, careful not to lose her position, but still keeping him back. As they come into the final straight the grey up ahead falters, missing his stride and finally a gap opens up. Tina is ready, has been ready since she first sat in a saddle, put her feet in the stirrups and her hands on the reigns. She spurs Blackout on, urging him to find that extra gear she knows he holds almost furtively within him, like a closely guarded secret.

It’s no different from riding with Eli for all those years, no different from that moment in the paddock racing towards everything she loved, not knowing that Cal was dead, not knowing all the things she had yet to lose. She had felt alive then and she feels alive now, adrenaline thrumming in her veins. Everything is beautiful, everything is possible. This is what she knows, this is what she was made for. Eli gave her this when he gave her Blackout.

A field of green is eaten up beneath a hundred thundering hooves. There is pain and loss and regret behind her but Tina is strong and no longer afraid.

Blackout is as solid and willing beneath her as he has ever been and together they fly.


End file.
